Academic Affairs. Eileen Sweeney reported that the subcommittee
had spent the year gathering information for a report on the use of
undergraduates as teaching assistants and graders in the college. She stated
that two issues required consideration:

What
was the nature of the work the students were engaged in – tutoring,
grading, technical training, class presentation? and

Were
the students paid or did they receive course credit? If the later, did
they receive credit more than once for working the same course?

She added that two departments seemed to be special cases:

Mathematics,
where students tutor and grade homework assignments but not exams; and

Communication,
where students are paid as graders in core classes and are given credits
for serving as TAs in upper division courses.

The subcommittee’s recommendations were:

Undergraduates
should only be used when there is a demonstrated necessity;

Undergraduates
who work as TAs or graders should usually be paid for their work rather
then given course credit; exceptions may exist; and

The
EPC should develop guidelines for when undergraduates could be used as
TAs.

Joe Quinn stated that the use of undergraduates as TAs and
graders was limited to six or eight departments and that the real issue was
budget. He allowed that in some cases
course credit might be appropriate but that strict criteria needed to be set
concerning how many credits and whether they should be graded or pass/fail.
Barbara Viechnicki added that the Computer Science Department needed to be
included.

Honors.Michael Martin reported that the subcommittee
had spent the year gathering information for a report on grade inflation or
compression in the College which also included surveys of other institutions. He
added that the rise in figures like the median GPA followed almost exactly the
rise in quality of the undergraduates over the past decade and a half. Joe Quinn stated that the problem was not
really inflation but compression resulting in the loss of the ability to make
distinctions among students.

Martin continued stating that the subcommittee report
included three recommendations:

·Educate the faculty about the general situation
in the college and in their department relative to their own grading;

·Develop measures for assessing student’s
relative performance and placing that information on the transcripts; and

Noting that the initial report with supplementary
documentation ran over 20 pages he added that the task now would be to decide
what to distribute.

Joe Quinn passed out a version “sautéed” down to a mere 10
pages, noted that the department by department comparisons would need to be
masked or deleted and that, to date, this should be considered confidential.

Solomon Friedberg stated that the difference between
students GPAs could be .001. Bill Petri, Michael Martin, and Ourida
Mostefai, agreed that the rise in the quality of the students
raised the possibility that the grade inflation resulted from faculty
expectations having remained flat. Robert Scott asked if there was a
correlation between SAT scores and grade performance. Bill Petri raised the
point that with this information the college might re-consider the GPA cutoffs
for any types of honors and distinctions awarded at graduation.

Martin concluded that there might be an additional
philosophical issue in that there did not seem to be any agreement on the purpose
of grades, for example are grades in some manner comparative?

Appeals.Jennie Purnell
briefly described the Appeals Subcommittee’s business as hearing student
appeals concerning grading and unfair applications of college rules and noted
that Appeals did not handle academic integrity cases.

Ourida Mostefai stated that
there were some outstanding jurisdiction and procedural questions noting that
occasionally a situation arose which involved students from the other schools
taking an A&S course. Solomon Friedberg noted that the appeal procedures
and integrity procedures varied between the schools.

NEW BUSINESS.

Joe Quinn stated that there would probably be requests to approve
two new minors this year – one in Catholic Studies and another in Jewish
Studies. He noted that the procedural model for these would be the approval of
the BA in Biology and the approval of the Psychoanalytic Studies Program.

Helina Teklehaimont and Christina Corea stated that there
would be a proposal for an Ethnic Studies Program originating from students.
Catherine Schneider stated there might be some initiatives dealing with cross
school minors. Joe Quinn noted that as CSOM did not allow minors there could be
no cross school minors with CSOM. Ourida Mostefai
added that students could take courses on a space available basis but they
could not construct a minor.

ADJOURNMENT. Joe Quinn
passed out the preliminary list of subcommittee assignments and ask that the
members caucus briefly to elect chairs. He adjourned the meeting at 5:00 P.M.